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October 31, 2013

(++++) BIG AND LITTLE

The Big Golden Book of Dinosaurs.
By Robert T. Bakker, Ph.D. Illustrated by Luis V. Rey. Golden Books. $16.99.

Paleontologist Robert
Bakker, whose wide-ranging and sometimes controversial theories about dinosaurs
are a significant element in modern thinking about them, brings those ideas to
children in the 3-7 age range through a well-written book whose narrative is
more challenging than the norm for this age group – and whose illustrations, by
well-known paleoartist Luis V. Rey, incorporate the most modern findings and
scientific understanding of what dinosaurs looked like and how they lived. Bakker
knows how to get to his audience: “Some dinosaurs were heavier than two dozen
elephants duct-taped together.” And he knows how to show young children the
ways in which science advances, for example when explaining how and why scientists
in the 19th century made serious mistakes while trying to figure out
what one dinosaur, Megalosaurus,
looked like – a section in which Rey’s “megalosaur wrong” and “megalosaur
corrected” illustrations are particularly outstanding in their contrast. Bakker
does a wonderful job of showing how the study of dinosaurs is in part a mystery
story, as scientists piece together – generally from pieces of dinosaurs! –
information on how the dinos lived and what they looked like. Bakker even takes
young children along on this journey of exploration, for example by explaining
how the search for dinosaur footprints in the 1830s led an early paleontologist
to conclude that Jurassic predators were, in effect, colossal birds. Continuing
uncertainties about dinosaurs get their due in this book as well. For instance,
there is the question of how it was possible for dinosaurs to live in what is
now Alaska, and how fossil leaves, in providing at least part of the answer,
make it more likely that carnivores had feathers. And there is of course the
extinction question, in which Bakker explains why he does not accept the
prevailing hypothesis about a huge meteorite strike killing off the dinosaurs
and instead believes that and other theories may need to be combined to arrive at
the truth. Bakker also does a fine job of connecting prehistory with young
children’s world today, by showing how mammals evolved during the age of
dinosaurs and then began to dominate the world after dinosaurs were gone – thus
explaining how “the dinosaur story is really our story, too.” The Big Golden Book of Dinosaurs tackles
a large and complex subject in clear, understandable form, and hopefully will
serve as an introduction for yet another generation of young people to
prehistoric creatures that continue to fascinate so many of us today.

Crocodilians are among the
dinosaur-era groups that survived the mass extinction at the end of the
Cretaceous and continued evolving until today. And they certainly look
dinosaur-like to most people. But as big and powerful as real crocodiles and
their relatives are, they have also become favorites in children’s books, thanks
to artists who make them much smaller and rounder than they are in real life
and give them problems to handle that only seem large. Done well, as in Greg
Pizzoli’s The Watermelon Seed, a
crocodile-based book for very young readers can be thoroughly delightful,
thanks to the humor of the story and the fact that the croc is really just a
stand-in for a child. The particular croc in Pizzoli’s book absolutely loves
eating watermelon – indeed, the chance to write “CHOMP! CHOMP! CHOMP!” in big
letters may have influenced Pizzoli to choose a crocodile as protagonist in the
first place. The croc’s problem is a small one indeed: a watermelon seed that he
accidentally swallows. Oh no! Now he starts imagining all the things that are
going to happen to him: vines coming out of his ears, his skin turning
watermelon pink, and so on. The poor croc gets so upset that he start crying
(yes, crocodile tears, although this is a book for very young children and
Pizzoli makes no overt reference to them). But then, wonder of wonders, a burp!
And the seed comes out, and the croc decides he had such a close call that he
is done with watermelon forever – well, except for “maybe just a teeny, tiny
bite.” With seeds, of course. The
Watermelon Seed is fun from start to finish, and can even be used by
parents as an object lesson in not overreacting to small things.

The small things in Jane
Yolen’s lovely, gentle board book, Hush,
Little Horsie, are colts, each rendered beautifully by Ruth Sanderson in
more-than-realistic style – that is, each is drawn anatomically accurately, but
portrayed with an extra-high level of focus on the eyes, the body position and
other elements to which Sanderson, interpreting Yolen’s text, wants to draw
attention. Those elements all have to do with sleep – this is a bedtime book
from start to finish, with each rhyme about horses in a different place ending,
“And when you are tired,/ She’ll watch as you sleep.” Beautifully colored
horses of various types are seen in the barn, out on the plain, at the seashore
and elsewhere, the gentle cadences of Yolen’s rhymes mixing soothingly with the
warmth of Sanderson’s illustrations to produce an overall feeling of quiet,
relaxation and motherly protection. The book ends with a human mother and her
daughter on the little girl’s bed, in a horse-themed child’s room, as the
mother assures her daughter that she
will be watching over the sleeping girl – who drifts off, cuddling a stuffed
horse, into a dream of the horses seen earlier in the book. Obviously intended
only for children with strong equine interests, Hush, Little Horsie will for them be a sweet little bedtime tale,
comforting and tender and thoroughly relaxing.